Louvain Aging Brain Lab

The Louvain Aging Brain LAB aims to study the manifestations related to normal and pathological aging, including those caused by Alzheimer's disease and other related diseases. Our research tools include neuropsychological tests (e.g., memory, language tests), imaging techniques (MRI/PET) that measure brain lesions or their effects on the brain, biological analyses of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and plasma, and the analysis of genetic risk factors. Our populations of interest in our research include patients with mild cognitive impairment who visit the memory clinic, asymptomatic people with a family risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, and both young and old healthy individuals.

The Louvain Aging Brain is also interested in exploring the cognitive difficulties that are encountered in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as frontotemporal lobe degeneration (FTLD), cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), and parkinsonian syndromes. Through this spectrum of diseases, our aim is to better understand the links between the biochemical alterations observed on some proteins, the regional distribution of various neuropathologies in the brain, and cognitive symptoms.

Team members

Principal Investigators

Postdoctoral Researchers

PhD students

Collaborations

Renaud Lhommel: Nuclear Medicine Department, Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc and Institut de recherche expérimentale et clinique (IREC), MIRO Lab, UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium.
Philippe Lefèvre: Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Christine Bastin, GIGA CRC In vivo Imaging (Aging & Memory), Liège, Belgium
Pascal Kienlen-Campard: AGing And Dementia lab (AGAD), Institute of NeuroScience, UCLouvain, Belgium
Didier Vertommen: MassProt platform, De Duve Institute, UCLouvain, Belgium
Bernard Gallez : Louvain Drug Research Institute (LDRI), Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Lab, Nuclear & Electron Spin technologies platform, UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium.
Benoît Lengelé: Surgery Department, Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc and Institut de recherche expérimentale et clinique (IREC), Anatomy Lab, UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium.
Dietmar Thal: Leuven Brain Institute, Laboratory of neuropathology, KULeuven, Leuven, Belgium.

Ongoing Projects

Lisa Quenon: Deep cognitive phenotyping and plasma analyses to predict early tau aggregation in preclinical AD
Lise Colmant: effects of ageing and early stages of Alzheimer's disease on spatial navigation, and relationship between the mesio-temporal lobe tauopathy and brain amyloidosis on spatial navigation.
Thomas Gérard: Validation and clinical use of F18-MK6240 PET imaging to visualize the anatomical distribution of tau pathological aggregates in Alzheimer’s and non-Alzheimer’s tauopathies.
Emilien Boyer: Validation of plasma biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease using ultrasensitive immunoassays (SiMOA).
Lara Huyghe : Study of cognitive changes occurring early in Alzheimer's disease and their links with regional deposits of tau protein and other biomarkers of the disease.
Axelle A.T. Vanparys: UbiTau - This project investigates the role of ubiquitination impairment as both a biomarker of tauopathies, focusing on human brain and cerebrospinal fluid, and as a causative agent of these diseases, using specific biological models.
Yasmine Salman: Study of the impact of proteinopathies, mainly tauopathy on the medial temporal lobe anatomy using variety of neuropathological and neuroimaging techniques, including high-field post-mortem MRI (11.7T) and tau-PET imaging.

Key publications

Colmant, Lise ; Boyer, Emilien ; Gérard, Thomas ; Sleegers, Kristel ; Lhommel, Renaud ; Ivanoiu, Adrian ; Lefèvre, Philippe ; Kienlen-Campard, Pascal ; Hanseeuw, Bernard. Definition of a Threshold for the Plasma Aβ42/ Aβ40 Ratio Measured by Single-Molecule Array to Predict the Amyloid Status of Individuals without Dementia. In: International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Vol. 25, no.2, p. 1173 (2024). doi:10.3390/ijms25021173. http:// hdl.handle.net/2078.1/285084
Malotaux, Vincent ; Colmant, Lise ; Quenon, Lisa ; Huyghe, Lara ; Gérard, Thomas ; Dricot, Laurence ; Ivanoiu, Adrian ; Lhommel, Renaud ; Hanseeuw, Bernard. Suspecting Non-Alzheimer’s Pathologies and Mixed Pathologies: A Comparative Study Between Brain Metabolism and Tau Images. In: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Vol. 97, no.1, p. 421-433 (2024). doi:10.3233/jad-230696. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/285086
Gérard, Thomas ; Colmant, Lise ; Malotaux, Vincent ; Salman, Yasmine ; Huyghe, Lara ; Quenon, Lisa ; Dricot, Laurence ; Ivanoiu, Adrian ; Lhommel, Renaud ; Hanseeuw, Bernard. The spatial extent of tauopathy on [18F]MK-6240 tau PET shows stronger association with cognitive performances than the standard uptake value ratio in Alzheimer’s disease. In: European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, (2024). doi:10.1007/ s00259-024-06603-2 (Accepté/Sous presse). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/285085
Colmant, Lise ; Bierbrauer, Anne ; Bellaali, Youssef ; Kunz, Lukas ; Van Dongen, Jasper ; Sleegers, Kristel ; Axmacher, Nikolai ; Lefèvre, Philippe ; Hanseeuw, Bernard. Dissociating effects of aging and genetic risk of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease on path integration. In: Neurobiology of Aging, (2023). doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2023.07.025 (Accepté/ Sous presse). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/277627
Kyalu Ngoie Zola, Nathalie ; Balty, Clémence ; Pyr dit Ruys, Sébastien ; Vanparys, Axelle A. T. ; Huyghe, Nicolas D. G. ; Herinckx, Gaëtan ; Johanns, Manuel ; Boyer, Emilien ; Kienlen-Campard, Pascal ; Rider, Mark H. ; Vertommen, Didier ; Hanseeuw, Bernard. Specific post-translational modifications of soluble tau protein distinguishes Alzheimer’s disease and primary tauopathies. In: Nature Communications, Vol. 14, no.1 (2023). doi:10.1038/ s41467-023-39328-1. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/275792